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IT managers: The biggest threat to infrastructure isn't cyber

By Rutrell Yasin

Oct 11, 2013

The biggest concern for the government IT infrastructure isn’t cybersecurity, but budget constraints, according to the recent Cisco Connected Government Study, which polled 400 federal, state and local IT managers about threats, funding and their familiarity with emerging technologies. The respondents cited:

Budget constraints (35 percent)

Cybersecurity (17 percent)

Employee devices on the network (9 percent)

Increased demand for constituent services (8 percent)

Limited network bandwidth (6 percent)

The manager’s goals for the coming year reflect those concerns, with some difference between state and federal managers’ concerns.

Goal

State

Federal

Reducing costs

31 percent

25 percent

Improving security

14 percent

30 percent

Boosting efficiency

21 percent

18 percent

Improving delivery of services

18 percent

19 percent

Enhancing mobility

11 percent

7 percent

Don’t know

6 percent

1 percent

Budget concerns were especially felt among state and local respondents, the survey report said. State governments have dealt with fiscal crises for several years and now appear to be coming out of it, said Tony Morelli, a Cisco area vice president for state and local government and education. State IT managers have been investing in technology to help reduce IT costs for some time, he noted.

Budgets may be the biggest worry, but security is still important. Respondents said technology is the most effective way to strengthen the nation’s cybersecurity posture, followed by better enforcement policies and employee training, and cybersecurity is still the top area managers want to invest in.

Although investment in the cloud is increasing, the majority of the IT managers are still lukewarm towards the approach. Eighty-one percent said they have either “great” or “some” confidence in the reliability of cloud computing, while 18 percent have “no confidence” or don’t know. Likewise with security in the cloud, about which 72 percent have either “great” or “some” confidence, and 22 percent have “no confidence.”

That response might seem like a contradiction, as agencies also seek to invest more in cloud technology. Technology complexity is driving up IT costs, especially as agencies have to hire more experts to manage their IT investments, Payne said, and cloud would seem like the ideal platform to help meet business objectives. Many federal agencies have invested in private clouds because of security concerns.

However, confidence in the public and hybrid clouds will increase as large-scale projects such as the Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise — which offers a common cloud infrastructure for all of the 17 intelligence agencies — unfolds, the Cisco officials noted.

In the emerging area of software-defined networking, 65 percent of those surveyed said they are familiar with SDN and 58 percent of those familiar with it expect the technology will become a viable solution within their organizations in the next few years. SDN automates routine networking tasks and can instruct the infrastructure to do what is best to support an application.

Meanwhile, 42 percent of respondents are familiar with the Internet of Things, the rise of objects and sensors that can be connected to the Internet, from cars to heart monitors to stoplights. IT managers familiar with the concept say it could enable the delivery of new services, streamline processes or reduce costs. Health care IT and Defense Department supply chains are some areas where IOT could be useful, Payne noted. The Internet of Things will drive agencies’ move to IPv6 given the large volume of connections and security complexity it will generate, Payne said. And the data generated by Internet-connected devices could drive further interest in big data analytics.

Clarus Research performed the survey for Cisco, conducting online interviews and phone interviews of 400 government IT managers — 200 from federal, 200 from state and local — between Sept. 3 and 13.

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Reader Comments

Wed, Oct 16, 2013
Vinod
Bangalore

Interesting thoughts, cloud technology offers numerous benefits, with so many government agencies now moving to the cloud the risks have multiplied and there needs to be a framework to mitigate these risks effectively. . I work for McGladrey and there is a whitepaper on the website that talks about the risks of benefits and the risks of moving to the cloud, readers will be interested. “Cloud risks striking a balance between savings and security” @ http://bit.ly/16uLsgi

Wed, Oct 16, 2013
Don O'Neill

Broaden the scope from internal IT to the application of IT, for example, Global Supply Chains, and richer set of risks emerges.
An industrial strength software risk management practice is one that treats risk as uncertainty, carefully distinguishes risks from the sources of risk and problems, and doesn't use risk management as an offramp to avoid actually solving problems.
Based on analysis conducted, factors evaluated, sources of problems identified, and problems representing objectives in a failed state, the Software and Supply Chain assurance risk is assigned high risk, driven by the numerous infrastructure factors in a failed state including austerity risk,
software risk, Internet risk, and Cloud risk. In addition trust and competitiveness are assigned moderate risk.

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